2009-12-09

Caught on Camera

"usually young males in their teens and twenties, who are drawn to this sort of mindless fanaticism. While only a few thousand people throughout the non-tribal populations of India and Pakistan, the Internet enables them to find each other. It also enables the police to find them".

This has been the great thing about the internet. People who have fairly obscure interests are able to find each other. Just go to google and stick in "mindless goofbags oil fetish" and hey ho, all of Foddy's comments on this blog come up.

Anyway, the "meeting of great minds" that I was looking for came about in 2003, where we were finally able to make contact with each other. Anyone in the world who had been working on the problem of worldwide freedom - genuinely working on it, with an air of desperation that was willing to use military force to make it happen, rather than simply going on a wankfest like left-wing arseholes like Human Rights Watch, with an emphasis on watch - would have been tracking Iraq closely.

Iraq was not just another liberation in a long string of liberations involving the US. This one was controversial, and part of resolving the controversy was allowing the Iraqis to give their opinions in an environment of freedom. So people all around the world would have been reading the same polls I was reading, looking for the side we hadn't heard from yet. And they would have been having the same arguments at the coffee machine as I was. But we had no way of knowing each other, because we worked in different companies, with different coffee machines, and the coffee machines were usually located in different countries too.

So still no opportunity to meet them. The Iraqi polls would have to suffice, with no other way of finding the people who would come to the obvious conclusion that we needed to speak to intelligent Iraqis in Iraq to find out what the hell they wanted, and how we could assist in building the world that both of us desired.

Then finally the Iraqi blogs came online, and for the first time we had an opportunity not just to discuss things with them, but also with each other. The number of great minds in the world turned out to be quite small, measuring in the hundreds. It seems that all the brand name institutions with cool names like "American Institute for Avoiding Debate" weren't willing to slug it out in the no-holds-barred free marketplace of ideas. Perhaps they can only lose brownie points by engaging in real debate. I can remember the tentative steps that these hundreds of blog commentors took. They were hoping the flogged-beyond-death horse of "Palestine" wouldn't come up and we end up finding that these seemingly nice Iraqis turned out to be yet more brainwashed bigots. It was such a delight to find real live Iraqis who were prepared to stand up for humanity.

These people told us they were the majority, but later we would find out from a secret ballot that they were only 0.3% of the population. But that's fine. The fact that it was non-zero was an extremely important data point, as it meant if you wanted to start defeating the enemy, "Arab Muslims" was the wrong target. That was in fact why I converted to Islam. So that I could explain that "Muslims" were the wrong target, unless you infidels could explain to me why I was a threat to you. As a Muslim, I am willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with you infidels so that we can eliminate our common enemy. I am more than happy - hell, I'm begging even - to point out all the bad (ie non-Mu'tazilite) Muslims to you. You provide the weaponry, and I'll pull the trigger. Guilt-free assistance to this sectarian war in the Muslim community.

Actually, that's what this blog is all about in fact. I tell the US government who *I* want eliminated, and then hope that they decide, however reluctantly, to accede to my request. Not just the US government. It's all governments I wish to influence. But of course, all of them are too chickenshit to get involved in a genuine debate (the sort that raged for nearly a year on the Iraqi blogs as each side brought their best to bear, ultimately getting squashed by message 666, where a checklist of all the differences were laid out - e.g. they support dogmatic notions, we oppose them - they are racists who don't believe in human rights for Arabs, we are anti-racist, etc etc). From time to time I still engage in those debates myself, e.g. I was debating an Australian yesterday, who insisted that because 2 people in America had some shares in oil, the war must be because of oil rather than what the 150 million Americans were adamantly stating to the contrary. Oh, I also got this moron to confirm that the view was not obtained from the Australian education system, thus the problem is not poor education in Australia etc, and thus the solution does not lie in "educating people".

I haven't yet isolated where decent Australians are picking up their decent opinion from though (church, parents, no idea). The person I have the most data on is myself, and even I have trouble figuring it out about myself. I think a large part of it is that I was just born with a tendency to dislike being subjugated (genetic instinct - subjugated people breed less), combined with a lot of brainpower used to figure out how to avoid being subjugated with the state of firepower in the world as it stood (e.g. how to prevent the commies doing to me what they were doing to their own citizens - and not relying on NATO to be superior for eternity, if it even was at the time), bitter opposition to my parents' own attempts to subjugate me by force of arms, and unjust Australian laws protecting the subjugators rather than the subjugated. Also there is "popular culture", which I was very surprised indeed to find out wasn't popular after all. Movies like "The Lighthorsemen" so brilliantly capture the spirit of freedom I thought ran rife throughout Australia, even if it was usually not verbally stated during peacetime to avoid appearing to be nationalists/bigots, and to avoid embarassing those who don't come close to our standards, and to avoid rubbing it in to those (like the beautiful people in Tiananmen Square in 1989) who are unable to participate in it currently and are saddened that they can't do a damn thing about their predicament since it is technically impossible.

So would weekly screening of "The Lighthorsemen" at primary school have the desired effect? No idea. No data available. All I have is one data point for one adult, who had that spirit even before watching the movie. Pretty Damned Useless.

So even though I know the solution, I'm still at a loss to know how to implement it. Getting people to internalize the spirit of freedom (on my/western terms rather than "Islamic State" or "independence from Britain" or other nonsensical use of the word). However, at least I know there's no point wasting resources on "education". Learning maths and physics does not turn arsewipes like AQ Khan into a decent person. In fact, an argument can be made that education is counter-productive, as it helps such arsewipes fulfill their evil ambitions. I'd rather take my chances with the illiterate Afghans of whom 88% or so oppose the (equally illiterate) Taliban. Apparently in Australia they used to teach why the Vietnam war was important, but the streets ended up being filled with arsewipes. I'm not saying that education directly caused the opposing reaction, and thus education of even Australians is harmful, but it's just to highlight the fact that resources are scarce and precious and you need to have at least some rough idea that if the resources are spent on xyz then it is likely to have the desired effect. Obviously the people teaching the importance of Vietnam can't have known in advance that it wouldn't have the desired effect, but without the benefit of hindsight it certainly seemed a reasonable use of resources at the time.

Where do we put resources now? For the most part I don't really know. So, as before, I am no longer funding any charities. I've stopped funding Iraqi and Afghan blogs because I don't think they will do any more than they have already. We basically have pro-freedom people on record explaining their diverse views. I have a couple of feelers out for other places, but nothing to evaluate yet. Interesting note - one of those great minds directly asked me where he should donate money to in order to promote freedom, and I told him that the pro-freedom Iraqi blogs that he was already donating to were the best thing I could think of at that point in time.